Andreas Beckermann wrote in to point out the huge amount of progress in the latest release of Boson (0.9), a real time strategy game for KDE. Screenshots here. Right after the beta announcement, KDE user illogic-al submitted his personal preview of KDE 3.2 on I-Kubed.org. It's been noted that there may be inaccuracies in the review -- but can you feel the excitement?!
Finally, several of you also wrote in to point out Linus Torvalds' comments on KDE in a recent interview on OET: "I think the biggest single thing that has happened [...] has been a lot of good library frameworks. Qt in particular I think made a huge difference. And the KDE libraries and toolbuilder infrastructure. [...] I just noticed that the KDE people consider it more important to have it working, and sane.
I don't get involved very much. I used to send a lot of bug reports to the KDE people, until I didn't have bugs anymore and I stopped." Thanks, Linus!

Don't be mad of him - as a linux kernel developer he's in permanent touch with microsofts attitude to standards. And I can tell you - if you're trying to implement a something-standard you WILL hate people fussing around with the specification - especially with the goal to "take over" the standard.

I guess it's just his way of saying 'this is what it's like when you have a needlessly IE only page.' Call it what you like: stupid, immature, whatever. It's his page, and if he doesn't want to be 'diplomatic' with respect to supporting users, that's his decision.

Personally, I liked the way it reminded me that I'd forgot to switch Opera back to saying it was Opera ;-)

no, it's not a pretty stupid thing to do, it's a pretty smart thing to do. does the word Protest have any particular meaning to you? If it does think of this as a protest, if it doesn't i think you should redefine just your standards for stupidity.

people here already said it but I'm not a kernel developer.
and yes i do play around with precompiled kernels. As a matter of fact i dont even compile my own kernel anymore. So what if i save a few megs of space, i've got gigs more left :D

The one we have here around the corner has Linux with KDE and Mozilla. =P
And 'easy everything' here allows you to do whatever you want to the Windows system, after a time out the system just get hard resetted, data gets wiped out (virtual drive I guess) and freshly rebooted (that's probably the most sane way under Windows *shrug*).
However internet cafes always remind me how much of a time saver tabs really are.

Julio, i'm not trying to win anything. The 'IE blocker" as i like to call is the for two reasons. One is it's kinda satyrical humor, poking fun at those IE only pages people put up.
More than that though it's a protest against IE and its shitty (yes, i said shitty) CSS support. If the page rendered properly in IE then I'd have no problems letting IE users in. I, however, refuse to 'fix' my page just for them (or you) if they insist on using that browser. if you don't want to download bloatzilla, or opera by all means don't. You have that option (just as I have the option to not allow IE browsers into my site until they get proper css support).

I'm using Konqueror, two, and everything shows up ok. What's the matter? If you can't see the last line on his 3.2 review just reduce the font size for a moment.

If you wanna protest, illogic-al, why don't you allow IE access to your page *without* fixing it? Thus you don't have extra work and it is some kind of protest, too.

Also, Julio, why not installing Opera? It's fast and lean. At work, I must use IE for some three sites, but mostly I use Opera (which even is my default browser on Windows). I don't know why people tolerate IE anymore. It's too clunky!

I've heared of a translation to the klingon language as well, so just go for it and create a KDE-i18n-package with all the german dialects on your own - KDE is opensource - everybody can take part and bring useless (but funny) stuff ;-)

I don't share the view that a translation to a minority language (not a DIALECT or a FUN language) was "useless". However it would be nonsense to start a project on my own (I can't do that alone) if there already was work in progress. So...

Is plattdeutsch really a language?!? I thought it's an german dialect spoken in the north. In which country do they speak niederdeutsch or plattdeutsch? Is the bavarian style of talking and writing a language, too?

it is a independent language, no dialect. In the european language charter it is recognized as a REgional language. It was spoken in 1/3 of historical Germany and menonite minorities in paraguay. A lower German dialect Luebsch was official language of the Hanse trade association that controlled large parts of the baltic sea. However due German national state building (in the late 19. century) it was suppressed and left to "rural people". same happens in the third world today with many languages that are dropped due to urbanisation in favour of the former colonial language.

See Wikipedia! There is even a platt wikipedia.

it would be a competitive advantage if KDE could fullfill the European Language Charter. You should know that an administrative body is obliged to answer in a reguinal language.

Low Saxon (Low German) was recognized as a legitimate language only recently. Prior to that, the dialects of Northern Germany were regarded as belonging to German, and the dialects of the Eastern Netherlands were regarded as belonging to Dutch. Because of centuries of official and educational neglect and suppression, the language has been unable to develop a standard dialect and a standard orthography, even though there is a notable written Low Saxon tradition. There are several spelling conventions, based on German principles in Germany and based on Dutch principles in the Netherlands, and few writers strictly adhered to any of them. So far, spelling systems have been devised and developed mostly by activists and writers with insufficient familiarity with phonological principles, and most Low Saxon writers have been trying to write their home dialect "phonetically." This disunity, together with attempts to germanize Low Saxon orthography, has led to a confusing situation that does anything but help this minority language survive.

> I don't share the view that a translation to a minority language (not a
> DIALECT or a FUN language) was "useless". However it would be nonsense to
> start a project on my own (I can't do that alone) if there already was work
> in progress. So...

Hi Gerd,
indeed there's a project for KDE in Low Saxon (or Plattduetsch). It's located at http://nds.i18n.kde.org/ (though the page is a little outdated now), and participation would be quite appreciated. And if you happen to use the Opera browser, you might find this link interesting: Opera op Platt

If you need further information, send me a mail: s [underscore] dibbern [at] web [dot] de

another reason:
playing multiple wave-files, or mp3+wave at the same time isn't possible, at least not by default. really, since YEARS, the first thing to switch of "aRts", after a new Linux or KDE installation!

Also, i hope, Linux could be used for PROFESSIONAL audio editing/engineering/recording etc. compared to "Cubase" and Co. !!!!!
that's all, well, waiting for a beautiful and strong KDE3.2!

By the way, what about the Idea, to collecting money for a simple but
professional TV Commercial about KDE/Linux ?!?!?! what stands against that idea !

Well, I think it was more of an example. I mean, we can't really switch all
of our apps to arts. XMMS is one that we can fix, by downloading the plugin and blah blah blah. It really is a pain, even with that wrapper. We need things simple. Sure it works, but its just a hack and an annoyance.

I think a network transparent multimedia system capable of connecting different computers, palmtops, TV etc. for everything multimedia related might be the right way to go in the long run. The German computer magazine c't had an article about the "Network-integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM)" project which looks very good. http://www.networkmultimedia.org/

>> I find 3.2 to be around the same speed as Opera 7.x however, which means fast.

Good to know this, as I found Konqueror renders some pages Opera cannot (nor Mozilla).

BTW, Konqueror could use some serious usability enhancements (like not having the "create new tab" and "destroy tab" together... DOH!). BTW, Firebird little closing [x] on the tab is cool... and BMW, it's a car. :-)